


Time Together

by StevetheIcecube



Category: Xenoblade Chronicles 2 (Video Game)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Family Fluff, Fluff, Gen, Implied Relationships, Nightmares, Spoilers, Torna Tuesday
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-23
Updated: 2018-10-23
Packaged: 2019-08-06 12:53:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,116
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16388090
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StevetheIcecube/pseuds/StevetheIcecube
Summary: Mikhail doesn't always sleep well. But when that happens, he has someone to go to when it's over.





	Time Together

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first piece for Torna Tuesday, something that's starting from this week for Torna (organisation or dlc, but I think organisation is the focus) fanworks every week on a Tuesday.

And he couldn't breathe. It hurt, in his chest, and his mind raced, but his body was heavy but screaming and shouting to move but he couldn't and each jolt made him jump inside and that hurt. He hurt.

He was cold and the world around him span, but he was too warm. Everything was too hot around him, each surface left him pulling away, each breath was a struggle through the thickness of the air and he was freezing. Boiling. And the whole time his mind was whirling and screaming.

His stomach hurt. Food pressed into his hands until the pressure left it on the floor and it stared at him. It sat there. It was there. It was food on the floor and he was hungry but he was sick and he couldn't - couldn't eat that anymore. Because it passed through his body and his body wasn't his it belonged to something that wasn't alive. It belonged to someone something dead something dreadful someone. Someone. Someone who wasn't-

He squeezed his eyes shut against the darkness pressing in. There were voices all around and he didn't even know if they were real, couldn't tell. He couldn't tell anything anymore. And the darkness behind his eyes was worse than the darkness in front because at least he could see that darkness. At least he could know that seeing things in the darkness could be real. Everything in the other darkness was fake but it felt real. The real darkness at least sometimes had dangers that he really did need to avoid.

He knew he needed to focus, because the world was bad and there were so many things he was afraid of but he couldn't. Everything hurt so much and it was hot and cold and everything came in little bursts that went away before he could make sense of them and he knew that it was getting harder or maybe easier if nothing would be real anymore but-

Mikhail woke up in his room in the Monoceros. Where he always woke up, at least when he remembered to move when he was getting tired. His heart was still racing from the memory of it all. It had been years - so many years that he hadn't tracked. He honestly didn't know if it had been decades yet, he didn't know how to count the years when he barely grew and Jin and Malos certainly didn't.

Those dreams didn't happen often, but even once had been too many times. Reliving that was... Mikhail pressed his palm to the core crystal in his chest. Its smooth points were so different to how it had felt in his body for so long. Maybe it was barbed under the surface, tearing him apart inside like he'd always envisioned, but if it was doing that it was doing it slowly and he was used to the pain by now. 

The feeling of it in his chest didn't hurt him anymore. It was a comfort, even. A constant that reminded him that he had power now and he wasn't going to let anything make him the child who had been unable to stop all that hardship. Still, though...the memories could hurt. The memory of being powerless, of nearly dying out there on his own before he was picked up off the streets half dead by one of the only people he had never, ever wanted to see again.

The memories of that time made him feel two foot shorter, and tiny, and hopeless in a world that had never given him anything good. Okay, maybe the last one was a constant, but it was a new kind of hopeless. The old kind was just miserable and apathetic.

Still shaking off the feeling of a burning shivering in the depths of his body, Mikhail got out of bed. He wasn't all that well rested, but he didn't need much rest anyway. The next time he went to sleep would just have to be half a week away instead of a week.

His feet led him the same way that they always did; Jin. Normally the room was shared, but Mik knew Malos was out doing whatever Malos did sometimes. Which meant it was just him, Jin, and the darkness of the empty ship.

Mikhail knocked twice on the door before entering, just to warn Jin he was coming in. He’d made that mistake a couple too many times to not do that now. He was sat on the sofa, and barely looked up when Mikhail entered. Just as it always was. Mik went to sit down next to him, not saying anything for now. He always felt like this after a particularly bad night.

“Bad dream again?” Jin asked, after a long time of the two of them sitting in silence at opposite ends of the sofa. Mikhail nodded. “The same one as before?”

“Similar,” he said. Within hours, it would all be hazy again, just like the time itself had been. “I think it was- closer to when it happened, this time.” He wasn’t sure what told him that, because in his conscious mind the chronology of that whole time was just a lump of events that could have happened in any order. But somehow, he knew.

“And nothing hurts?” Jin checked. That was the routine; when they’d first been together, Mikhail would wake from every dream, good or bad, with a stabbing pain in his chest because his unconscious mind didn’t know how to regulate ether. So Jin always checked, even though it had been years since his body had finally taught itself how to deal with everything.

“I’m all good,” he said, and the usual small smile crept onto Jin’s face.

“Glad to hear it.”

And they sat in silence for a while longer. Just existing next to each other until Mikhail felt the overwhelming fear starting to ebb away. Malos had suggested once that if he came to Jin after every nightmare, he wouldn’t be able to get over it without him, but it wasn’t like that. If he stayed in his room on his own, he’d get over it. If he got up and kept himself busy, he’d get over it. But it was nicer this way.

Time passed, and Mikhail settled with his head on Jin’s shoulder. Jin’s whole presence emanated a cool, calming feeling, and Mikhail let his eyes fall closed again as Jin’s hair brushed his forehead. Being next to Jin...it made him feel like he was in a better time, and he could almost imagine Lora and Haze alongside them, completing the only family Mikhail had ever been a part of.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading :) please please consider also doing stuff for Torna Tuesday (@tornasbrain on twitter is the person who's starting this up, he's a cool dude) either today or in any other week. And if you liked this, please don't be afraid to leave a comment, I try and respond to everything I get!
> 
> I'm also very aware that I did just drop off the face of the earth for about a month, rip. Been very busy because I just started my degree, but I'm starting to find the workload manageable so I should be able to get back to posting more regularly soon.


End file.
